This is one of the issues with having TOS characters in this show. I know they kind of have to be, but their story is already established and that seriously limits how they can be used. Unless we were going to have some more time travel or other weirdness repeating itself, the relationship was doomed to failure from the start.
Not necessarily. They’ve already seriously retconned Pike having foreknowledge of his fate, and used that burden to expand his character immensely. They did a similar thing to Chapel by having Boimler accidentally spoil the fact that she and Spock don’t end up together, and that has been further built upon to allow her to grow as a character. There are enough big gaps in canon to play around a lot.
I think of it like a historical drama. For, say, a show set in the thirties, you know the next decade is going to be all kinds of hell for every single character, but they don’t know it, and the dramatic tension of that is something that can be used to write stories that you can’t do otherwise.
